MAIMONIDES, MISHNEH TORAH, AUTOGRAPH DRAFT

This is a draft of a portion of the Book of Civil Laws, a section of the "Mishneh Torah" of Maimonides (1135– 1204), written in his own hand. The philosopher and royal physician wrote his masterpiece on rabbinic law in Hebrew, whereas his earlier works had been composed in Judeo-Arabic (Arabic in Hebrew characters). Maimonides’s cursive Sephardic script is similar to contemporary Arabic script. The pages seen here deal with the laws of hiring (right) and the laws of borrowed and deposited things (left).